Another hectic week in the tropics. I had the pleasure of some extremely interesting visits to A*STAR research institutes and one visit to NUS. IMRE I know well, though the new ATOMTech kit and experiment was new for me and fascinating. IHPC was a new world, somewhat distant from my own field of research, but as computational biology grows, HPC is going to figure increasingly in our research. IME is amazing – massive clean room and capability for MEMS (the bit of IME I could use). Need to think hard about this one, as there are real possibilities for new sensors on a chip.
Now back to the task of dealing with the ton of e-mail that has accumulated before I fly off tomorrow.

A must! November 22, SR , Life Sciences building. Details on Rapha-z-lab
I will be on a plane… …somewhat annoying as I wanted to hear Rachel talk about surfaces and cells, which for me is one of the most fascinating interfaces (no pun) in science.

My views on the future of the forum and “Centres” in the new scheme of things is fairly simple. If a community is vibrant then it will continue with little effort and, importantly, throw up new leaders every 4-6 years. If a community does not exist and/or depends entirely on one person then why should it hold meetings? So I guess this means that someone should step into Raphael’s shoes in in the next 12-24 months.
As for LINSET, there is no budget, but it is a useful vehicle, so we might as well keep the badge. Re-badging and shifting deck chairs takes time an effort, better spent on other activities. The Bionano activities can for the next three years be held under the umbrella (aka tea, coffee and biscuits) of the Department of Structural and Chemical Biology.

I received an e-mail from Anne Calof for a rather enticing short course on Systems Biology at the Center for Complex Biological Systems at the University of California Irvine. Enticing because it looks to be a lot of fun and January is always a good time to escape our northern darkness. I have too much stuff on, but Virginie is valiantly checking flights, etc., after I made sure the budget is there.

Exciting times: Faculty has advertised 23 positions, with three representing major developments in our Institute: Cell Imaging, Genomics, Bioinformatics/Modelling.
For my sins I chair the search committee for the new Professor of Cell Imaging… …and the search is now fully active. Happily for us, our University is in a position to invest at a time when many are retrenching, so this is a good time to chair a search committee.